Twisty the Clown - The Base [Part 2]

I won't say that Twisty's base was a pain but...wow, I think I spent a full 8 hours working on it.  Why?  Well, this post is to tell / show you why.

The artist that did this awesome sculpt did a hand drawing on the bottom of the base of Twisty, making it even more special than it was to begin with.  Now, sadness, as I attempted to protect the drawing, it smeared during the application of the matte finish (on the upper right side).

I chose cocobolo as the wood for this piece because I found a board at Woodcraft that had a really cool 'spooky' pattern in it.

I started by joining two pieces of the board together.  This was a great idea so that I could outline and cut the middle out at once.  Well, kinda a good idea, until the sander made them not joined and I used a pocket hole joint to put them back together.  Dang glue just wasn't enough.

The fun part of this base was cutting the right shape to fit Twisty in and allow the drawing to be seen.  This involved some rough cutting with a hole saw, band saw, roughing with a rasp, sanding with a drum sander (cocobolo is really waxy and gums up sand paper easily also).  Eventually I got it to the right shape but smaller by 1/8".  This was done so that I could run a router around it so that Twisty could snap into place and have 1/8" of support under the edge of the base.  Snap and a few spots of epoxy and he doesn't come out.

The base was finished with a few coats of wipe on satin finish after a good sanding.  Hopefully it compliments the piece and doesn't overshadow it!  Oh, now I have a Pepper from the same artist...complete with a hand drawing, wish me luck on her base also!